204 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



May 



stop the female bug, for I have seen a dozen of 

 them around one pile in the morning, strug- 

 gling desperately to get up, but to little pur- 

 pose, as 1 never saw one half way to the top of 

 a well made pile. Thomas Elus. 



Rochester, Mass., Feb. 25, 1867. 



Remarks. — The canker worm is extending 

 its ravages not only in New England, but in 

 the Middle and Western States. We gladly 

 publish every fact that seems to cast a ray of 

 hope upon the subject, although we must con- 

 fess that we are less sanguine than our corres- 

 pondent of the efficacy of his recommendation. 



Otmpowder Waste. — We are informed by 

 another correspondent that when O. M. Whip- 

 ple, Esq., the well known gunpowder manu- 

 facturer of Lowell, commenced business in 

 that place, his purchase of real estate included 

 about two acres from an apple orchard of some 

 ten acres. With the idea of benefiting the 

 soil, he applied some of the "waste" from his 

 mill about the trees on his land. In the course 

 of a few years canker worms commenced their 

 work of destruction upon the trees of the ori- 

 ginal orchard, but left unmolested those on his 

 two acres, although separated only by an or- 

 dinary fence. After they had worked some 

 six or seven years, Mr. Whipple purchased 

 the remainder of the lot, and by applying this 

 waste he banished the insect entirely from the 

 ■whole orchard, and has not been troubled by 

 them since. ' 



Our correspondent understood Mr. Whipple 

 to express the opinion that the efficacy of the 

 waste in this case, might be owing, in part at 

 least, to the salt which it contained. We 

 were not aware that salt was used in making 

 powder. Saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal are 

 generally understood to be the main ingre- 

 dients of this wonderful product, but we do 

 not know what other substances may be em- 

 employed in the process of manufacture, and 

 thus find their way into the waste of the mill, 

 which we understand, when judiciously applied, 

 has proved to be a most lasting fertilizer. 



On behalf of many despairing fruit raisers, 

 we would solicit a fuller statement from Mr. 

 Whipple. 



Wooden Boxes. — At the request of several 

 of our readers who have lost their copy of our 

 paper containing the statement of Mr. G. B. 

 Moulton, of Kensington, N. IL, who success- 

 fully protected his trees from the canker worm 



by means of wooden boxes, we re-produce the 

 following directions : — 



"In the spring of 1865 I placed wooden 

 boxes, ten inches high, around all these trees, 

 allowing a space of two inches between the 

 tree and the inside of the box. It would have 

 been better to have left a space of three inches. 

 I filled the inside with tan, and made it solid 

 by pressing it down with a strip of board. The 

 gutter around the boxes was placed about 

 three inches from the top ; the corners being 

 made tight with roofing cement ; and a clap- 

 board was nailed on the top edge of the boxes, 

 so as to form a roof over the gutter. I filled 

 the troughs with 'bug oil,' which can be ob- 

 tained in Boston at from twenty to twenty-five 

 cents per gallon. This I prefer to coal oil, 

 because it will not skim over ; while the coal 

 oil will skim over in forty-eight hours and 

 afford a bridge for the grubs. There arc two 

 kinds of this bug oil — the thin and the thick. 

 I prefer the thick for wooden troughs, as the 

 thin is liable to leak out. When they run the 

 thickest, the surface of the oil needs to be 

 cleared off as often as once in two days. I 

 use a piece of lathe for this purpose, and a tin 

 quart measure with a long lip to turn in the 

 oil. 



"The cost of these boxes is not great. I 

 paid seventeen cents a piece for making the | 

 boxes, and found the stuff. Any kind of 

 cheap boards wil\ answer. For the gutter two- 

 inch stuff of good quality should be used. I 

 purchased second-hand tubing used for chain 

 pumps which cost two cents per foot. Divid- 

 ing this, my troughs cost one cent per foot. 

 Some that I had made, cost two cents per foot 

 for making. The clapboard should be of good 

 quality, so that it will not crack by the weath- 

 er. My trees are very large, and some of my 

 boxes were about ten feet around them. I es- 

 timate the boards at seven cents per box — 

 troughs ten cents, and clapboards at three 

 cents — making the whole cost of boxes at thir- 

 ty-seven cents per tree ; and the whole cost 

 of oil, tan, and labor, not to exceed one dol- 

 lar. For any ordinary orchard, this would not 

 exceed fifty cents per tree. It takes, for 

 troughs of this size, about one quart of oil at 

 a time." 



It will be remembered that Mr. Moulton 

 considered his experiment a perfect success, 

 and that his care and labor was rewarded by 

 a fair amount of fruit last year. The objec- 

 tion that the young worms, hatched from eggs 

 laid below most protectors, are able to sur- 

 mount the obstacles which impeded the ascent 

 of the full grown female, is obviated by the use 

 of the troujrh of oil. 



— The Gardener's Monthlij s.iys that most of tho 

 fiiihu-cs in phvntiug raspberries and blackljerrics, 

 arise from plautiug too deep. 



